All signs point to promising spring turkey hunting season

An abundance of vocal, aggressive 2-year-old gobblers, the result of outstanding nesting success in 2015, sets the stage for what could be a very productive 2017 spring turkey hunting season. The Rio Grande turkey season opens March 18 in the state's South Zone and April 1 in the North Zone.

An abundance of vocal, aggressive 2-year-old gobblers, the result...

On a morning earlier this week, a crew of Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's wildlife division staffers fired a rocket-propelled net over a flock of Rio Grande turkeys they'd baited to a spot on Mason Mountain Wildlife Management Area in the Texas Hill Country, capturing about 20 of the big birds.

As biologists and technicians went about the work of carefully untangling, checking and recording the birds, fitting them with aluminum leg bands and releasing the collection of mostly hens as part of a statewide project aimed at learning more about turkey survival and movement, a chorus serenaded them.

"While we were working with the hen turkeys in the net, there were toms not 100 yards away gobbling their heads off," said Jason Hardin, TPWD upland game bird specialist who coordinates the agency's wild turkey programs. "The gobblers are obviously ready for things to get started."

So are Texas' turkey hunters.

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The male turkeys are anticipating the start of the birds' annual mating season, a spring event triggered by an alchemy of hormone levels, body condition, photoperiod and who-knows-what prompting an onset of a procreation imperative in hen turkeys. When that trigger is pulled, hens become receptive to the blandishments of gobblers who gobble, strut, dance, fight among themselves and generally do whatever they can to attract potential mates and discourage rivals.

Texas' tens of thousands of turkey hunters are anticipating the start of the spring turkey hunting season, a season timed to coincide with the birds' annual mating behaviors. Those behaviors - gobblers loosing their rattling calls, hens replying with yelps and clucks and keens and putts, both sexes drawn to the other's cajoling - give a hunter skillfully using calls imitating a hen a chance to pull a mating-minded, long-bearded, sharp-spurred gobbler within shotgun range. Sometimes.

That six-week spring hunting season for Rio Grande turkey opens March 18 in the 54 counties of Texas' South Turkey Zone and April 1 in the state's 110-county North Turkey Zone.

Texas' turkeys and turkey hunters head into this spring with considerable positives behind them.

"Things are really looking great for turkeys across most of the state," Hardin said. "Our Rio Grande turkey numbers are up - way up, in some places."

Texas' turkeys have enjoyed two - and in some areas, three - consecutive years of outstanding reproduction after suffering poor hatches during a multi-year drought, which peaked in 2011 and finally broke in 2014, withered bird numbers and contracted their range in some areas. Timely, abundant rains and relatively mild temperatures during the past two summers and three winters triggered a growth in flush grasses, forbs, mast crops, insect populations and other habitats that allowed hen turkeys to build crucial body condition ahead of the physically stressful nesting season. The increased cover and forage improved nesting effort, success and survival of poults.

Perfect conditions

Texas Rio Grande turkeys had relatively good nesting seasons in 2014 and a very good one in 2016.

"But the turkey hatch in 2015 was just phenomenal," Hardin said.

And that portends very good things for Texas turkey hunters during the coming season.

"There are tons of 2-year-old gobblers out there," Hardin said. Those gobblers, going into their first mating seasons as adults, stand to make things exciting for Texas turkey hunters.

Two-year-old gobblers typically are much more aggressive and talkative and significantly less wary than older birds, and much more likely to respond to hunter's calls.

"Two-year-old gobblers are going to be feeling their oats," Hardin said. "They're the ones that tend to strut the most, make a lot of noise, come looking for that hen they hear. They're just a lot more responsive, in general, than older gobblers. For turkey hunters, there's nothing better than having a large number of 2-year-old gobblers on the landscape. "

That's exactly what Skipper Duncan has seen in the more than two decades he has run spring turkey hunts through his Adobe Lodge business near San Angelo on the western edge of the turkey-rich Edwards Plateau.

"The years when there are a lot of 2-year-old gobblers, hunters tend to be more successful," said Duncan, whose put turkey hunters on a half-dozen properties covering 30,000 or so acres along the Concho River. "This year looks like one of those years."

It also looks like 2017 could be another outstanding year for turkeys.

"Going into spring, range conditions are outstanding across most of the state," said Hardin, who has crisscrossed the state over the past month, trapping and banding turkeys. "We've had a very mild winter and good rains in most of the state. Hens should be going into nesting season in great condition; that increases their chances of pulling off a successful hatch. The landscape is just a gorgeous green, so there should be good nesting cover."

Duncan concurs.

"Things look extraordinarily good for the birds. We had good rains all winter - as much as 21/2 inches in February - and the world's turned green" Duncan said. "There were lots of those wonderful winter forbs and other greenery turkeys love. The birds we're seeing are in great shape."

"If we have another mild spring and summer and get a little moisture here and there at the right time, we could see an extended nesting season. That means hens that lose their first nest will have the opportunity to renest," Hardin said.

Timing of that mating/nesting season promises to play a significant role in turkey hunters' chances of success, as it does each spring turkey season. Hunters stand their best chance of calling a gobbler when the bird doesn't have a lot of mating-minded hens from which to chose.

Still in groups

Despite what has been an unusually "early" spring in most of Texas, anecdotal evidence indicates Rio Grande hen turkeys in much of the state remain in their large "winter" flocks and haven't broken into smaller groups and spread out over the landscape as they usually do when the mating/nesting season starts.

"The big mesquites have already budded out," Duncan said. "That's at least three weeks early. But most of the turkeys are still in big groups and staying to their winter roosts. They aren't roaming widely, yet."

"Some of the places we've trapped in the past couple of weeks, the hens are still wadded up in big groups," Hardin said. "If the hens aren't thinking about the breeding season, yet, that could work to hunters' advantage. The gobblers are ready, they're looking. So, if you get out there and sound like a lone hen when all the other hens are still not playing the game, you've got a real good chance of calling that gobbler."

The opposite is true once the hens break their winter congregations and focus on mating.

"It can get tough to call a bird when they're 'henned up,' " Hardin said. And that's going to happens sometime during the six-week season, he said.

Couldn't ask for better

Overall, prospects for the 2017 spring turkey season are as encouraging as they've been in several years. The boom in Rio Grande turkey numbers over the past two years has resulted in the birds expanding into areas from which they'd all but disappeared during the most recent drought.

"People are reporting seeing turkeys in places they haven't been seen in 20 years or so," Hardin said, noting much of that expansion has been in the Rolling Plains and Panhandle, areas hit hardest by the most recent drought. "If your a turkey hunter or a turkey, you really couldn't ask for things to look much better than they do, right now."